Dr. Cedrek McFadden, a board-certified colorectal and general surgeon with over 20 years of clinical experience at Prisma Health in Greenville, South Carolina, recently shared five questions he believes every patient should ask their doctor about lab results. McFadden – who serves as a clinical associate professor of surgery at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine and is a regular health contributor on NBC’s Today show – made the recommendations in an interview with TODAY.com, identifying them as essential lab result questions to ask your doctor after years of observing how patients misread or misunderstand their own blood work.
Lab work, broadly speaking, refers to tests done on samples of your blood, urine, or other body fluids to check for various health markers. A typical annual checkup includes a variety of measurements – cholesterol, blood sugar, kidney function, and a complete blood count, among others. These numbers land in your patient portal with little context, and most people do exactly what McFadden describes: they scan for “normal” or “abnormal” and close the tab. That habit, he argues, leaves a lot of important health information on the table.
Understanding your blood test results goes well beyond checking a green or red flag. The numbers in your report sit inside something called a reference range – the span of values considered typical for a large group of healthy people. A reference range is defined as the set of values 95 percent of the normal population falls within, and it is determined by collecting data from large numbers of laboratory tests. That means the range was built for a crowd, not for you specifically – and that distinction matters more than most patients realize.
What “Normal” Really Means on a Lab Report
Before getting into the five questions, it helps to understand why reading lab results is more complicated than it first appears. For many tests, reference ranges include the values statistically reported for the middle 95% of the reference population. That leaves 5% of completely healthy people – roughly 1 in every 20 – whose results land outside the “normal” band even when nothing is wrong with them.
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If the reference interval has been derived from a population that differs from the individual being tested, it may give a misleading impression of that patient’s status. Reference intervals are relatively inflexible instruments and do not take into account any special history or other characteristics of the patient. In practice, this means a person who takes a particular supplement, follows a strict diet, or exercises intensely may routinely sit outside the standard range without any medical problem whatsoever.
Reference ranges are usually established by collecting results from a large population and determining an expected average result and expected differences from that average. There are individuals who are healthy but whose test results – which are typical for them – do not always fall within the expected range of the overall population. This is precisely why understanding your blood test results requires a conversation with your physician rather than a solo review of the numbers.
The 5 Lab Result Questions to Ask Your Doctor
Question 1: Is This Number Normal for Me Personally, or Just for the Average Population?
Your lab report tells you whether your test result falls within a reference range, sometimes called “normal values.” A reference range is a set of numbers that form the high and low ends of the range considered normal, and those ranges are based on test results from large groups of healthy people. That group is not you. It may not even closely resemble you in terms of age, medication use, fitness level, or medical history.
McFadden’s core point here is that the same number can carry very different meaning depending on the individual. A creatinine level (a waste product filtered by the kidneys, used to measure how well they work) that looks slightly elevated in the report might be completely normal for a person with naturally higher muscle mass, like an athlete or someone who lifts weights regularly. Conversely, a result that sits comfortably inside the “normal” band could still be worth investigating for someone whose personal baseline has always run lower.
Seeing your doctor when you’re healthy helps the doctor understand specific needs and baseline functions – such as heart rate, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. What’s normal for one patient may not be normal for another, and establishing a baseline helps the doctor know what’s right for you. This is the first and most fundamental lab result question patients should ask: not “is this normal?” but “is this normal for me?”
Question 2: How Does This Compare to My Previous Results?
As McFadden explains to TODAY, “One of the biggest things I tell patients is that one number by itself doesn’t mean much. I care more about where it’s going.” A single data point is just that – a single point. What physicians find far more useful is the direction of travel over time.
Many times, the actual number is less important than the trend. If your labs are checked at regular intervals, comparing them from year to year or month to month can be more important. A cholesterol reading of 195 mg/dL looks reassuring in isolation, but if it was 160 mg/dL the year before and 175 mg/dL the year before that, the upward trajectory is something worth discussing – even though the number itself still falls inside the “desirable” range below 200 mg/dL set by the American Heart Association.
This trend question applies across most common lab markers, from blood sugar (glucose) and kidney function to thyroid hormone levels. Asking your doctor to pull up your last two or three years of results and walk through the direction of change takes only a few extra minutes but gives you a fundamentally clearer picture of your health than any single reading can.
Question 3: Could Anything I Did Before the Test Affect These Results?
“A lot of times, I explain that not every abnormal result is a disease,” McFadden emphasizes. “Sometimes it’s dehydration, something you ate, a supplement, even intense exercise the day before. Context matters more than people realize.”
This is one of the most commonly overlooked aspects of physician lab advice. Lab results do not exist in a vacuum – they are a snapshot of your body at a very specific moment, and that moment can be influenced by things that have nothing to do with an underlying illness. Strenuous exercise in the 24 hours before a blood draw can temporarily raise your creatinine level and certain liver enzymes. Dehydration can concentrate the blood and inflate a range of values. Eating a high-fat meal before a fasting lipid panel can skew triglycerides (fats in the blood measured as part of cholesterol work). Even taking a biotin supplement (a B vitamin commonly found in hair and nail products) can interfere with certain hormone tests, including thyroid function panels.
Before a blood draw, it’s worth asking your healthcare provider if you should stop taking any medications, vitamins, or supplements. Sometimes, certain medications can affect the results of a blood test. The same applies in reverse: if you forgot to fast before a test that required fasting, or if you had an unusually intense workout the morning of the draw, telling your doctor that context is genuinely useful information. It can be the difference between repeating a test unnecessarily and simply understanding why one number looks off.
Question 4: Do Any of These Results Need to Be Repeated Before We Act on Them?
“One result doesn’t always tell the whole story. I’ll often repeat labs just to make sure it’s real and an isolated abnormality. That alone can save people from a lot of unnecessary worry,” McFadden says.
This is a question that far too few patients think to ask, and it can spare a significant amount of anxiety. A single out-of-range result – particularly when it’s only mildly outside the reference band – does not automatically call for treatment. Many physicians will repeat a test before drawing any firm conclusions, especially for markers prone to natural day-to-day variation.
Lab results are tools, not diagnoses. Your lab results are part of your health picture, not the whole picture. Combine them with your symptoms, physical exam, and medical history for complete understanding. The question to ask is direct: “Before we consider any next steps, should we run this test again to confirm?” A good physician will already be thinking this, but patient-doctor communication works better when both sides are engaged in the conversation. Research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and reviewed across multiple clinical settings consistently supports the value of test confirmation before treatment decisions are made.
The quality of communication both in the history-taking segment of a visit and during discussion of the management plan was found to influence patient health outcomes. The outcomes affected included, in descending order of frequency, emotional health, symptom resolution, and physiologic measures such as blood pressure and blood sugar level. Asking this question is also one of the most effective ways to reduce health anxiety – knowing that a borderline result warrants a recheck, rather than immediate concern, changes the emotional weight of waiting.
Question 5: What Is the Next Step, and What Is the Plan?
“The most important thing is that labs should lead to a plan,” McFadden says. “Sometimes that’s lifestyle changes, sometimes it’s more testing, and sometimes it’s just watching it over time. But there should always be a clear next step for you.”
This is the question that ties everything together. A lab result without a follow-up action is, at best, incomplete information and, at worst, a source of ongoing anxiety with no resolution. Whatever your results show, leaving the appointment with a concrete plan – even if that plan is simply “we’ll check this again in six months” – gives you something to work with.
The plan will look different depending on what the results show. For borderline cholesterol levels, it might mean specific dietary changes and a retest in three months. For a mildly elevated blood glucose reading (a measure of sugar in the blood), it might mean increasing physical activity and monitoring more closely. For certain results, it might mean a referral to a specialist. If cardiac blood test results aren’t at ideal levels, your healthcare provider may want you to make changes to your lifestyle, such as eating foods with less fat, avoiding fast food and red meat, exercising more often, not using tobacco products, and losing weight. You may also need to start taking medicines – like medicines to lower your cholesterol – if your provider decides you need them to prevent heart disease.
The point is that there is always a reasonable response to any result. Asking this question out loud forces that response into the open – and holds both you and your physician accountable for having a direction.
Why Patient-Doctor Communication Around Lab Work Actually Matters
It might seem obvious that you should ask your doctor questions during appointments, but research consistently shows that most patients leave appointments with unanswered questions and incomplete understanding of their results. A review of multiple studies demonstrated a correlation between effective physician-patient communication and improved patient health outcomes. The habits that drive better health – medication adherence, lifestyle changes, follow-up testing – are all more likely to happen when a patient genuinely understands what they’re working toward and why.
There is also a very practical reason to ask these specific questions about lab results: the numbers on your report sheet do not come with your personal context attached. Your doctor will look at your current results and compare them to previous ones. They’ll also take your age, medications, and illnesses into consideration. That interpretive layer – the one that turns a number into meaningful guidance – only happens in conversation. A report delivered through a patient portal without any discussion is, at best, a starting point.
Physician-patient communication plays several functions, including making decisions, exchanging information, managing the patient’s doubts, addressing emotions, and enhancing self-management. Features of effective quality communication include involving patients in decisions, allowing patients to speak without interruptions, encouraging patients to ask questions and answering them, and discussing the next steps. The five questions McFadden identifies map almost perfectly onto those features – they invite interpretation, encourage two-way dialogue, and always end with a plan.
What Abnormal Lab Results Actually Mean for Most Patients
One of the most important things to absorb from McFadden’s advice is that an “abnormal” flag on a lab report is not the same thing as a diagnosis. It means a number fell outside the band that was statistically defined for a large general population. Just because you have an out-of-range test result, it does not necessarily mean you have a health problem. Based on the 95 percent distribution, 5 percent – or 1 in 20 healthy individuals – will have levels that fall outside the normal range.
What do abnormal lab results mean for patients in practice? They mean a conversation is needed – not a diagnosis. The result opens a question that your physician is trained to help you answer, using your full medical picture, your symptom history, and your personal baseline. A mildly elevated white blood cell count (white blood cells are the body’s infection fighters) can reflect a recent cold, intense stress, or a strenuous morning run just as easily as it can signal something worth investigating further.
Abnormal results are common and don’t necessarily mean that something is wrong. Many times, the trend of a specific lab result over time is more helpful than one specific number. If you have questions about your blood test results, it’s best to talk with your primary care provider or other healthcare professional. They can help you understand what it means and what to do next.
Read More: 10 of The Best Ways to Help Combat High Cholesterol and High Blood Pressure
What This Means for You
The next time your lab results land in your portal, resist the urge to either dismiss them or spiral into worry. Pull them up before your appointment, write down your questions, and walk into the room prepared to have a real conversation. The five questions McFadden identifies – whether this number is normal for you personally, how it compares to your past results, whether recent activities could have skewed it, whether it needs to be repeated, and what the plan is – are not complicated or confrontational. They are simply the questions that transform a sheet of numbers into actionable health guidance.
Good patient-doctor communication is not about challenging your physician’s judgment. It’s about giving them the full picture and making sure you leave with one too. Answers to simple questions can help you feel better, take better care of yourself, or even save your life. Your health depends on good communication. Print out those five questions, tuck them in your wallet, and use them at every blood work follow-up you have. That habit alone – consistently asking the right lab result questions to ask your doctor – does more to help you understand your health than any amount of late-night searching through symptom websites ever will.
Medical Disclaimer: This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and is for information only. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions about your medical condition and/or current medication. Do not disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking advice because of something you have read here.
A.I. Disclaimer: This article was created with AI assistance and edited by a human for accuracy and clarity.
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